Trade Is a Women's Issue
By Bama Athreya, International Labor Rights Fund

December 13, 2002

From coffee to computers, women workers provide the labor that creates the goods that appear in the world's supermarkets and department stores. Women workers are good for trade, but is trade good for women workers?

Trade liberalization and the rise of export-oriented industries rely on female wage labor, particularly in manufacturing. The World Development Report estimates that women constitute 70-90% of workers in export processing zones (EPZs) worldwide. In agricultural industries, women make up approximately 43% of the formally documented agricultural work force, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). FAO studies note that when including informal participation in this sector, particularly in developing countries, women may produce well over half of the world's food. In short, the world's consumers rely on female labor. By the late 1990s, it was not unusual to find trade negotiators sitting down with women's rights organizations to hear their concerns. However, such consultations have not translated into bargaining proposals, and women's rights organizations are increasingly allied with labor and environmental groups in citing the fundamental failure of trade to benefit the world's poor.

Bama Athreya <bama.athreya@ilrf.org> is the deputy director for the International Labor Rights Fund, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit advocacy organization. She also provides analysis for FPIF (www.fpif.org).

 
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